Trust, as a sociological construct, has become increasingly important in recent times
but an agreed definition is yet to be found. A potentially useful way of ‘defining’ trust
is by distinguishing it from other semantically similar concepts. Niklas Luhmann has
provided semantic distinctions between trust and familiarity, and trust and confidence.
The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence of a further semantic
distinction between trust and dependence. This distinction allows us to further define
trust and also to investigate the difference between ‘trust’ and ‘dependence’
